100%, was going to post something similar, and this really goes back to the other discussion about bad practices. Why aren't systems forced into MFA? People have learned bad cybersecurity practices through years of bad / useless cybersecurity education. I wrote my companies training because all the off the shelf solutions were terrible, not slightly lacking, terrible.

I partially agree with you, except, the failure wasn't due to Microsoft, it was due to a bad setup and operating procedures. Let's just stick with Windows, you can use it securely, using VMs as hard isolation boundaries, and you should be doing that. Look at QubesOS, using VMs to isolate domains, and you can do the same thing in effect on Windows, have one VM that handles email, have another that has secure file access, and another for personal anything. Then the host system is basically just a VM host, and none of the VMs can access each other, without intention. In a secure environment, that's the minimum you should be doing.

Past that point, why weren't the files stored in a secure and encrypted manner? If the files were encrypted with AES-256-GCM, and required keys for access, where the keys required MFA to access and sync for a limited time, that would essentially solve the problem. Other ideas, what about basic, simple email security? PGP is a gold standard, why was it not in full deployment? At least in that case you'd have identity validation enabled, which I'll grant is not common, but it should be.

This entire issue is the fallout of someone not paying attention, and being careless, should the OS stop you? Would Linux stop you? What about some of the Unix's? At some point, the OS isn't really at fault, as much as the user, and in this case, it's a user issue, IMO.

I think it's a stretch to blame Microsoft for this, it's really down to the practices IMO. If you run Windows, and want to be secure, deploy VMs entirely to protect yourself, which could have prevented this issue. That being said, I see where Microsoft could be at fault, but who runs Windows in a secure environment, without taking exception extra steps? The contractor failed.

No, the same issue could have happened on Linux, or Unix, it doesn't really depend on the OS, it's down to bad practices. Hell, even if the data was secured properly, and or, containerization security practices were deployed it would have been prevented. Windows wasn't at fault, as much as the practices.

I like to Microsoft bash as much as the next Unix / Linux loving nerd, but, is this really their fault? It's possible to deploy containerization security standards on Windows, to make it high security, so, is the real issue the contractor didn't follow smart isolation? There is a real issue with data storage and data handling, but again, is that Microsoft's fault? The data should have been encrypted with something like AES-256-GCM, and every node in the network should have been closed tighter than a nuns nasty, requiring MFA.

Well blaming Microsoft is usually the right move, in this case it appears to be more of a security blunder by the contractor, hell, why was he even running Windows? QubesOS is an objectively better choice for any high security setting, like a hospital, or health care network.

I have one daughter in primary school, and one in secondary school, and I've seen these "tests" before. Not this specific test, as I'm in Canada, but I've seen tests that try and determine reading comprehension, and relative math skill. Maybe the test was fair, but, I've seen occurrences where you're asked to find out about X in a story, but, X was subjective. In the same style, I've seen math questions that were worded in such a stupid fashion that understanding the question was difficult. In one case, the high school math teacher couldn't understand the word problem, at least he was honest about it.

My younger daughter had homework a couple of years ago, that was impossible to answer for her math class. The questions could not be answered without an assumption, and when I pointed that out to her grade 6 teacher, the teacher blamed me for confusing my daughter. I messaged the textbook author, showed them, and sure enough the question had been copied incorrectly, and the assumption was clearly listed as a bullet point for the original version.

Why point that out? What if the tests are missing important details? In Ontario, Canada, we have (or had) to take a "literacy test", in grade 10. Part of the test, when I took it, involved reading a story and pointing out details about it, in the form of subjective questions, subjective questions, not objective, subjective! A number of students failed the test across Ontario because of those stories, it wasn't if you could read the stories, it was if the person marking agreed with you, if they bother to read your answer at all. Once you failed, you had to take it again the next year. I was sitting in English class, grade 11, when the teacher (Ms Radley) said (paraphrased): "It's important to understand how they want you to read the story, and what information you need to extract.", what? It's not a subjective issue, it's objective, and if it's not objective, then you're not testing reading comprehension, you're testing imagination.

100% it's about locking in, which is one of the reasons they do it. They can't afford to have people discover better alternatives, so they force a locked ecosystem. Now, if they were Apple, and it was smooth, and worked, great, but with Microsoft, it's a junkyard built car, that hardly turns over, and breaks down every km.

Imagine the change if Windows didn't come pre-installed onto virtually every computer meant for desktop style work. If you got to pick Windows, Linux, or Unix, how many people would honestly pick Windows? Hell, what if you picked Windows and saw the license costs go up, how many would?

The only reason Microsoft is making this offer, is so they can abuse access to OneDrive, which is now turned on by default, to vacuum up data for AI processing.

What other reason would Microsoft have for doing this? Office 365 is a subjectively valueless program, it falls well short of other offerings in the office space, such as LibreOffice. It's buggy, glitchy, crashes, locks up, and makes a song and dance out of doing anything reasonably simple, pair it with OneDrive, and you've really unleashed a new level of incompetent data complexity. I can visit LibreOffice and grab a fully featured, secure, stable, supported and open office platform, for free, with none of the BS of Office 365, that I know will work, without having to worry on daily, hourly, or to the minute if my files or programs will be corrupted.

Why don't we have active gym classes any more? I don't know, but when my primary school aged daughter had gym, last year, it was cancelled because one of the girls got scared when a boy spiked the ball during volleyball. What they should have had, was a high impact, high drive, high output gym class, where you work your ass off, sweat it out, and get active.

How many occurrences of ADHD / ADD would disappear if kids could get active? When a kid tries to express any active output, they get told to sit down, stay still, and stop any form of useful active expression. Heaven forbid they should play at recess because you don't want a kid to fall down, right?

Schools have become so worried about inclusiveness they've forgotten that boys and girls are not the same, to spite what the left leaning media tries to claim. Boys should be active, generally, they should be running, playing, physically expressing themselves, and getting the built-up hormonal changes dealt with. If they could do that, reliably, and at recess and daily or bi-daily gym class, how quick would ADHD / ADD claims fall?

My brother was stuck on ADHD medication in primary school, oddly enough, when he got active and didn't have to sit still and pretend to be a girl, he didn't need the medication. This isn't a knock against women or girls, but, we have to get boys more active, it's not normal to sit still for X hours a day, being yelled at for moving around.

I'm honestly convinced you can't do any meaningful cost management or budgeting in Azure. I would love to be proven wrong, but I've been involved with having to crunch data about costs out of Azure, and it's always a head bang annoyance. It got to the point I gave up and wrote my own GO-based tool to grab the data I needed, correlate service data against their pricing APIs, and build custom output. If you rely on Azure / Microsoft to give you good feedback, you're just shooting yourself in the foot, and crying that it hurt.

A few years back, I read a good book on Freemasonry, that my mother-in-law bought me for Christmas. Before that, I don't know, I think it was a different Freemasonry book my mother bought me, but if I add up all the books I've enjoyed reading, it's under 10, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was under 7. That total includes everything I remember reading from grade 1, until now, and the reason? Most books are boring, and long, and if I have a couple of hours to spend doing nothing, why invest that into the pointless journey of bad character development?

In grade 4, I had a meeting with my parents and the teacher (Ms Brown), to discuss why I didn't enjoy reading. My mother was crying (of course), and my father was just there, I don't think he really cared. The teacher was very concerned that during "free reading" I would take short form books and read 10 of them, and then summarize them. My teacher honestly thought I didn't know how to read, and was hiding it. I explained in some paraphrased form that I found reading boring, which caused an immediate reaction, that it was my fault that I found it boring.

What did I find boring about it? The waste of engagement, some sloppy, poorly written character spends 100 pages to get nowhere, and you could have just told me in the first page. That triggered an investigation through Special Education because they still thought I was unable to read, but trying to make excuses. The look on Mrs York's face, Special Ed teacher, when I f'ing crushed the entire assessment, was priceless. I ended up by the assessment reading at a grade 12 level in grade 4 (I have no idea how you judge that). I could and can read, I just don't like long format nonsense, and how many of us are in the same boat? How many of us were told we're at fault because we have different preferences?

The question isn't if you enjoy reading, the question is: What do you read, and can you read? If you can't read, that's another topic, but, if you can read, but don't like reading hundredths of pages, when a ten-page summary would have gotten you to the same place, then what's the problem? How many of us read Slashdot every day? How many of us read source X or Y, in the same format? If one paragraph can get me to click a link to a multipage article, why is that not good enough of a metric?

If you enjoy reading, that's wonderful, but why is it an issue when you don't? Maybe you don't dislike reading, you just don't like reading long format styled work.

Actually, if you look up the term in the Oxford or Cambridge Dictionary, "buy" does not mean you get full, unrestricted access to something on your own term, which, I'm actually surprised by. I don't think I've ever looked up what "buy" meant before, but, according to the dictionary, it only provides you access to something in exchange for a fee.

That being said, it is ridiculous for any company to claim buy would not mean: (paraphrased): "You're given something to keep in a usable form.", for example a VHS Tape, or a DVD. Amazon can claim they put a footnote in a terms and conditions block of nonsense, but, did they actively draw attention to that section? Even if they wanted to fall back on the terms and conditions, they could have said "rent", which would make it more objectively and commonly clear as to the intention.

Let's assume working "in-person" did have some advantage(s), when you consider the downsides, any productivity gain is quickly lost. For instance:

Dealing with the increased sensory issues, of noise, scent, and visual distractions constantly!

What if you have a co-worker whose hygiene is less than ideal. I work with someone who smells like rotting garbage, but taking him as an outlier, what about strong scents in general? Is your office going to take air quality and scent control seriously? (No, no they won't), if you complain, will they install comprehensive filtration? Maybe a Rabbit Air A3 in every room?

Perhaps there is no scent issue, and the room is lovely and "scentless", what about noise? If I have to wear noise-cancelling headphones to focus, why not just stay at home? I'm not innocent in noise pollution, I've had several people complain about my keyboards making too much noise, well, what can I honestly do about that? I'm not going to use a sub-par membrane mush keyboard, and mechanical keyboards sound mechanical. What about when a meeting starts up that's not relevant to me, that's additional noise pollution, or work parties outside the office room, It's all noise pollution.

What about visual pollution? Same idea, I won't break this down, and I think we all understand it, climate issues? Why do I have to work in a sweat lodge because the female employees have some serious temperature regulation issue? Seriously, the number of times I've had the office comfortable, and a female employee walks in crying about being cold, and turns the temperature up, it was nearly constant.

Driving stress? What's the point in dealing with the drive? 2 hours stuck in traffic over the course of the day, to move from a controlled home office, to an uncontrolled feral community style office? What benefit did I get from that drive?

Should we discuss the difficulties of using medicine at the office? This has happened to me since I use medical cannabis, and the office management (the people who owned the building, not my company), lost their minds when I used to smoke joints outside the building. That's what I use for seizure and pain control, so what choice do I have?

The only reason to go back to an office, is because someone is paying rent or taxes on an empty building. I can control my home office to be just the way I like it, and I can pay out of pocket for that control, so why not give m the chance to be productive and comfortable?

Ya, which why the memory requirements are astronomical. I just bought a new notebook for my daughter, and 32 GB was the minimum for memory I'd get her. Any less, and the notebook would be on the way out, at least with 32 GB she should get a few years with it.

Oh, repairs... dear lord. Trying to order the compliant gasket to assure IP68 vs IP67, well, have fun! Effectively, the IP68 rating makes the phones not repairable, and if you've ever had to do service on devices like that, it's a nightmare. Now, if Google makes everything available, cool, but I've done enough repairs to know they won't, don't and good luck trying to get the right materials.

Different product market, but I had a product once that needed foam replacement. The company, kept sending me foam X, on paper it 99.9% identical, with an * at the bottom. That * made the foam unusable, for a number of reasons. If you put that foam in, and ran the environmental tests, you didn't notice, unless, it got wet. Now, it shouldn't get wet, a gasket had to fail, and the setup had to be wrong, but, it was possible. Trying to get foam Y was a nightmare, the company didn't want to send it for cost reasons, but the device couldn't be re-certified without it.

I can't guarantee it, but I bet the same thing is going to happen if these phones get repaired. That IP68 is for new in box, never refurbished, never exposed devices, hell, I bet even pocket wear is going to void that IP68.